1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an image forming apparatus, and specifically relates to a technology for performing dry cleaning of components used in an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, manufactures of office equipments, such as copying machines, facsimile machines, and printers, have been proactively making recycling activities to create a resource recycling society. Such recycling activities include collecting used products from users, disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the products, and reusing the products themselves or certain components of the products. In the case of image forming apparatuses, such as copying machines, facsimile machines, and printers, toner, which is a very fine powder, generally inevitably adheres to the components inside the image forming apparatuses. When recycling the image forming apparatuses itself or the components thereof, it is necessary to clean the toner.
Some conventional methods, i.e., wet cleaning methods, use water or solvent for cleaning the toner. However, in such methods, there is a problem of increase of energy consumption, environmental burdens, and costs because of processes necessary for disposing effluent that contains toner and for drying the components after the cleaning is finished.
Some other conventional methods, i.e., dry cleaning methods, use air blow for cleaning the toner. However, because cleaning performance is not sufficient for removing toner attached with strong adhesive force, an extra process is necessary for manually removing toner using a cloth or the like. Thus, the cleaning process is considered as one of bottleneck processes in a product reusing/recycling process.
Some still other conventional methods, i.e., blast cleaning methods, use dry ice for the toner. However, these methods have higher running costs and they put a lot of burden on the environment because they use a large amount of dry ice.
For counteracting above problems, Japanese Patent No. 3288462 discloses a dry cleaning device that removes dust attached to a cleaning target object. In this technology, the dry cleaning device agitates an electrified cleaning target object with an elastically flexible contact member in a rotating cylinder to neutralize the cleaning target object, so that adhesive force of the dust can be weakened, and the dust can be removed from the cleaning target object. However, it is difficult to remove dust with strong adhesive force because contact force between the contact member and the cleaning target object due to agitation is not sufficient.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 2889547 discloses a technology for removing attachment from a cleaning target object by blowing particles finely cut from a small sphere or a wire rod made of steel, aluminum or stainless to the cleaning target object. Moreover, Japanese Patent No. 3468995 discloses a technology for a shot blast method of removing dust and dirt from a container made of resin by blowing high-velocity air containing particulate solids to a surface of the container.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-329292 discloses a dry cleaning method of removing attachment from a cleaning target object. In the dry cleaning method, a particulate cleaning medium that adsorbs fine particles is introduced into a cleaning target container, and a cleaning nozzle is put into an opening portion of the cleaning target container. High-velocity air is injected into the cleaning target container and discharged from the cleaning nozzle to blow up the cleaning medium inside the cleaning target container. The cleaning medium that has been blown up removes particles attached to internal surfaces of the cleaning target container. Subsequently, the cleaning medium collides with a mesh portion at an end portion of the cleaning nozzle, so that fine particles adsorbed on the cleaning medium is removed and filtered to make it possible to reuse the cleaning medium. Recycled cleaning medium is re-blown up by air to repeatedly clean the cleaning target container.
However, in the dry cleaning device disclosed in the Japanese Patent No. 3288462, the contact force between the contact member and the cleaning target object due to agitation is not sufficient. Therefore, it is difficult to remove dust attached with strong adhesive force.
Furthermore, in the shot blast method disclosed in the Japanese Patents No. 2889547 and No. 3468995, because a small piece or a particulate solid finely cut from a metal small sphere or a wire rod is used, a surface of the cleaning target object is scratched and scrubbed, making the surface rough during a process of removing dust from the cleaning target object. Therefore, the shot blast method is not suitable when it is not allowed to scratch the cleaning target object.
Moreover, in the dry cleaning device disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-329292, processes of flowing up the cleaning medium and recycling the cleaning medium by adsorption are simultaneously performed, which is effective for a small-sized container. However, for a large-sized cleaning tank in which a cleaning target is introduced and moved for cleaning, there is a possibility that the cleaning medium is accumulated without being flown up in the cleaning tank, causing stagnation flow of the cleaning medium, because energy for flowing up the cleaning medium is dispersed. Therefore, it is difficult to sufficiently flow up and recycle the cleaning medium in the large-sized cleaning tank, resulting in degrading cleaning performance.